Post by Josh on Feb 27, 2008 17:02:52 GMT -8
Myth, Fact, and Perplexity
by Joshua Coles, MS
“Read patiently, take not up this Book in an idle hour.
The consideration of these things is the whole duty of man
and the affairs of life and death” William Blake
If we are ready to accept that the opening chapters of Genesis present faith affirming claims, we must be equally ready to acknowledge the perplexing imagery and unanswerable questions they challenge us with. My aim, as a reminder, in these articles is not only to build up faith, but to discuss faith’s perplexities just as freely . Over the next few pages we will survey a few of the challenges Genesis presents in keeping with the goal.
Speaking of perplexities: the same chapters that posit elements of General Relativity also speak of talking serpents. The verses that give us a stunning and ancient picture of the Big Bang creation speak of Eve being created from Adam’s rib, trees whose fruit will cause you to live forever, and angels with fiery swords centuries (or millennia) before there was a human to invent one.
Even the authorship of the book is full of controversy. Tradition assigns it to Moses, along with the other books of the Pentateuch, yet these books never state their author unequivocally. Although some critical scholars argue for a date much later than the life of Moses, a good case can be made that they were written by someone shortly after the Hebrew exodus from Egypt (but even the date of the exodus is debated).
Still, early on I realized that the actual author of the Pentateuch is much less significant than the time period in which Genesis was written. Compelling arguments in favor of at least a majority of the content of the Pentateuch being written at an early date (around the time of Moses) include such fascinating details such as the accurate reporting of the price of slaves, inheritance practices, and legal documents during the period of the Patriarchs- unknown and unverifiable to history until only recently. But, even though we may be able to find evidence for Genesis being written at an early date, for me an even more intriguing question is not who wrote Genesis or when, but where did the author get his information.
Was the information in Genesis 1-3 (or, it might be proper to include the material all the way up through chapter 11) given to the author as a dream or vision? Was it a Mohammed-like dictation from the voice of God? Was it a folk story handed down from the generations? Or did the author piece together elements from other creation stories and throw in a few original ideas?
On the one hand, the Genesis account shares significant elements in common with the surrounding culture’s creation myths. The author doesn’t state that he has received a specific revelation from the Hebrew God. Perhaps the areas where Genesis disagrees with other cultural cosmologies can be explained by artistic license? But on the other hand, how is it that it is just those elements that seem to fit what we know from science of the early earth the best? As stated in the previous chapter, how is it, if the whole account has it’s origin completely in human creativity, that this account alone could be so accurate? One would expect the more accurate accounts to come from the more advanced societies of the day- the Egyptian or Mesopotamian. Yet a nomadic people accustomed to a life of slavery produce the one creation account suggesting a God who creates ex nihilo- “out of nothing“ or “out of what cannot be seen“ (Genesis 1:1, Hebrews 11:3). And “out of what cannot be seen” is as good a way to describe the big bang as any.
It would certainly clear many things up if we knew where this information came from, yet the account does not tell us. We are left to wonder.
It is not only the historically minded that find Genesis a challenge, but although the theologians and philosophers. Genesis confronts us head on with the enduring questions of free will and determinism. Anyone who takes the Genesis account at all seriously inevitably asks such questions as: Did Adam and Eve truly have free will? Did God intend the fall of man? Could it have been prevented? If God is all-powerful and completely good, how could he allow humans to suffer? Did God, in effect, create evil?
In my own journey, I found it interesting to note that atheists were just as perplexed by some of the same questions as I was. Secular philosophy is transfixed by the question of free will, simply devoid of the God element.
This began to help me see that we are dealing with paradoxes of immense proportion- perhaps paradoxes that any of us- Christian or atheist- will only ever vaguely resolve.
I was helped further by recognizing that science is discovering all sorts of paradoxes all the time. Thanks to Einstein, all sorts of things that we once took for granted about time and space are now questionable. Might it be conceivably possible that both free will and determinism exist simultaneously? Many scientists and theologians are arguing just that in recent years.
On a more personal and less theoretic level, CS Lewis helped me make sense of some of these themes: “Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” (MC, 48). Like Augustine long ago, I made my way past the claim that God was the author of evil, partly by reason and partly by trust that my reason is limited.
But, speaking of evil, what of this shadowy figure known as the devil who appears in serpent form in Genesis 3? He is amazingly obscure. I fancy that if I was writing the creation narrative that I would have included a detailed narrative on his origin. Yet the author does not indulge us. In fact, there are only scanty details regarding the devil throughout the Bible.
Serious bible students note how the information scripture confides about satan (including fallen angels and demons) undergoes an interesting evolution from Genesis through the Kings, the Prophets, and beyond to the New Testament. Scholars make all sorts of hypotheses as to why this is: perhaps the influence of various foreign belief systems, perhaps the result of increasing divine revelation of the spiritual realm. That is a topic large enough for a study of it’s own, but I have been hung up on a more specific question: why does satan appear as a snake?
In fact, it’s not even very clear whether the author of Genesis even saw the snake as the devil we associate him with. Certainly, Jews at a later time held the two as synonymous, but it is hard not to see some more mundane explanation in the original writing. Was this a mythic taboo against snakes in general? Does the author mean this as allegory, or literal history, or both? If the snake was really satan afterall, why punish the animal for the sins of a fallen angel? And how does this all fit in with the fossil record? I’m sure we find record of legless snakes before the advent of man.
I’m obviously not going to solve this dilemma within the confines of this essay. And that, of course, is my point. For every amazing answer we may find, we can be sure of an endless supply of new questions. That is the nature of Scripture: the extremes of doubt and affirmation all at once.
How can we better understand these extremes? The preceding questions serve as a perfect springboard for questions that will dominate this series. Instead of simply plunging ahead without reflecting, it will be worth our time to survey how many a pilgrim who has been on this road before has responded to the extremes of Genesis and Scripture as a whole. I have observed three general approaches to questions of this sort, and I believe it will benefit us greatly to spend some time analyzing them.
The first I will call the Scientific-Historical view. Some readers see factual detail and look for ways to justify those facts through science and history. They see the Genesis account as a reliable scientific description of the beginnings of the universe and man. Typically they hold a high view of the inerrancy of Scripture and come up with elaborate (if sometimes dubious) theories reconciling science with Scripture. The worst of this approach postulates all sorts of loophole nonsense, such as the appearance-of-age theory which suggests that God simply made the universe to appear old. Thus, geological strata all logic would dictate as being a million years old is actually just 6,000 years thanks to divine sleight of hand. Other theories that have been found wanting are numerous, such as the canopy theory, or the idea that all the fossil layers were laid down in one single year (the Flood). Some attempt to reconcile evolution with the Genesis account. The best of the Scientific-Historical position furnishes arguments of the type discussed in the previous chapter: vindication of certain aspects of the creation story that were once scoffed at such as a universe with a finite beginning and the remarkable correspondence of the days of creation with earth’s known formative history.
Of course, others (usually atheist or agnostic) who are also looking for historical and scientific fact reject the Genesis account finding it too fanciful and being unwilling to bend over backwards to explain away the weirder elements. I will call this the Skeptical view. Genesis has been a stumbling block for the empirically minded for centuries. The minute a talking snake enters the picture, those of this persuasion write the whole thing off. Thus, there may be a whole lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater ( Whether the talking serpent belongs to the category of bathwater remains, of course, to be seen.) The Skeptic may want to believe, but feels that to do so would be to sacrifice all their intelligence in the process. They often attack those of the previous view, but they actually share more in common with the Scientific-Historical than with the next view, the Mythical, which they secretly (sometimes openly) despise.
The Mythical view (and this is becoming quite popular) regards the whole account as a non-literal or extra-literal story whose primary purpose is to explain the major themes of existence. This view assumes that the author of the story began with concepts that were evident in human experience (such as pain, death, or longing for something transcendent) and explained their origin by making up simple, memorable stories. Those who take this position wholeheartedly say that what is important in the Genesis account is the ideas and not the particulars. It is the proverbial shell that must be stripped away to reveal the essential kernel.
Of course there are many versions of the Mythical view. That which I’ve just described was popularized by the late Joseph Campbell. But others of a more distinct Christian persuasion have held somewhat similar views. CS Lewis seems to have doubted the particulars of the Genesis story while affirming their symbolic truth. Augustine, in an odd finish to his Confessions, sees Genesis as largely allegorical. Those who take the Mythical view have an easier read when it comes to Genesis. There is no need for painstaking study of either Hebrew or science- just an armchair search for timeless human truths. And after finishing the Genesis account they can easily pick the up Babylonian or Hindu and learn just as much.
That said, I must say in my own personal quest I have swayed back and forth between these three views many a time. I believe I discovered something important in the process, and perhaps I can substantiate it. But, first, it must be explained why a book discussing Scripture as a whole must labor so heavily in the first few chapters. The answer to that is that these three views just discussed are bound to rear their heads over and over again in any discussion of the Bible. And getting a handle on them now will help navigate through the rest of the voyage. We are just setting out and, like JRR Tolkien’s Frodo, already we must deal with the Black Riders, Mr. Butterbur, and Strider.
What I have learned is that each of these positions offers important insights, but holding on to one exclusively is negligent. Perhaps I have set up straw dummies by making arbitrary divisions. Or perhaps the views I have discussed do seem to you to be real world positions. In my experience many hold firmly to one or the other of these views and are therefore missing the fullest experience of what the Genesis account has to offer us.
The Scientific-Historical perspective offers some amazing anchors for faith in a skeptical world, but it has it’s limitations at well. It runs the risk of being so focused on the literal that it confuses what literal really means. A classic example is the fuss that some make about the word yom (the Hebrew word we translate as day in Genesis 1 and 2). Yom can mean three things in Hebrew: a 24-hour period, a 12-hour period, or an indefinite amount of time (such as an age). Now, many would say that the literal meaning of yom is a 24-hour period, while age is a symbolic or figurative meaning. But as Newman and Eckelmann point out, this is “somewhat a matter of semantics” (61). Things which appear to be symbolic may actually be literal; we just don’t know enough about the author’s original use of the language. The best thinkers in this category do a scrupulous job avoiding such confusions, while others are less careful.
Furthermore, just because some elements of the Creation narrative are demonstrably in line with scientific knowledge, that doesn’t mean that the symbolic isn’t present as well. Consider the flaming swords that the angels guard the garden with after the fall of Adam and Eve. Is it really possible that angelic beings wielded the kind of swords we imagine, when swords as we imagine we created by humans at a later date. Did humans somehow get the idea of swords from their experience of the Fall? I suppose that’s a possibility, but I doubt it. Most likely the author is describing something he can’t describe any other way than to use something from his own experience which is similar to what he intends to describe. It may just be a picture of the hard-core reality of the separation of God from man. Or it may have been more real yet than that, we just have no way of knowing. But to shut out all possibility that the author is using mythic imagery is like having blinders on.
The Skeptical view in it’s turn teaches us the value of scrutiny. Without skepticism we lose sight of objective reality. Skepticism offers us a means to discover what is true, what is not so true, and what is false. With it we can compare and contrast, judge, and evaluate. We can demonstrate some world creation myths to be more true than others. We can guard against being taken in by “myths and old wives’ tales” (1 Timothy 4:7).
Still, the irony of the person who takes a strictly Skeptical stance is that they often
let their doubt about the strange elements of the Genesis account blind them from the demonstrable truths. It’s not just that some of the elements in Genesis or the Scripture as a whole happen to be true and some happen to be false (as we would expect from a merely human history of myth). It’s that some things are miraculously true and nothing is entirely demonstrably false. The skeptic is quick to scoff at the phrase “entirely demonstrably false”, saying that a smart enough debater can defend anything with enough Platonic questioning , but they are also just as quick to ignore the first part of the sentence: “some things are miraculously true”. This is the baby that the skeptic throws out with the bathwater. These are nuggets such as: how did the author of Genesis get the order of earth’s formative history right? how is it that Genesis and Einstein agree on so many points? and later, as we shall see, how is it that Scripture can prophesy events hundreds of years in advance with real accuracy? Just because some things are hard to swallow doesn’t mean that the more obvious miracles of Scripture are less miraculous.
Moving on to an analysis of the Mythic position, we come full circle. The Mythic argument reminds us that there was a time (which yet exists in many parts of the world) when the distinction between physical reality and spiritual truth was not as distinct. It is ignorant of us today to not recognize that these two overlap in the great Story of the Beginning. Also, it is usually the Mythic side that reminds us that Genesis is a Story addressing the deepest of human needs and questions and inspiring us with the notion that life is grand and miraculous, full of tragedy and promise. “Yet I have this against them” : they let their view blind them from the crucial and foundational supports for Christian faith that critical study brings.
Their divorce of science from myth is costly- and I believe that it is eroding the historical foundations of orthodoxy. Scripture is more than fact, but not less. The minute we stop caring about fact is the minute we relegate Christianity to the tame library of other alternate belief systems. Fact is nothing to the Eastern myths: that is apparent from Hindu cosmology. Islam depends upon the word and character of one mystic alone in the desert, but Christianity has always had fact as it’s bedrock. Remove that underpinning completely, and it will collapse. Our faith will then be “useless” as Paul so curtly explains (1 Corinthians 15).
So, after wrestling with all of this I have concluded that the truth in approaching the claims of Scripture is found in synthesis; that we must keep in mind the facts and the myth beyond the facts. We must keep questioning but let the answers we have found shed light on the questions that still plague us.
And when it comes to Genesis the questions still abound. Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? Where do the Neanderthals fit in? We should stay awake at night with these question every once in a while.
by Joshua Coles, MS
“Read patiently, take not up this Book in an idle hour.
The consideration of these things is the whole duty of man
and the affairs of life and death” William Blake
If we are ready to accept that the opening chapters of Genesis present faith affirming claims, we must be equally ready to acknowledge the perplexing imagery and unanswerable questions they challenge us with. My aim, as a reminder, in these articles is not only to build up faith, but to discuss faith’s perplexities just as freely . Over the next few pages we will survey a few of the challenges Genesis presents in keeping with the goal.
Speaking of perplexities: the same chapters that posit elements of General Relativity also speak of talking serpents. The verses that give us a stunning and ancient picture of the Big Bang creation speak of Eve being created from Adam’s rib, trees whose fruit will cause you to live forever, and angels with fiery swords centuries (or millennia) before there was a human to invent one.
Even the authorship of the book is full of controversy. Tradition assigns it to Moses, along with the other books of the Pentateuch, yet these books never state their author unequivocally. Although some critical scholars argue for a date much later than the life of Moses, a good case can be made that they were written by someone shortly after the Hebrew exodus from Egypt (but even the date of the exodus is debated).
Still, early on I realized that the actual author of the Pentateuch is much less significant than the time period in which Genesis was written. Compelling arguments in favor of at least a majority of the content of the Pentateuch being written at an early date (around the time of Moses) include such fascinating details such as the accurate reporting of the price of slaves, inheritance practices, and legal documents during the period of the Patriarchs- unknown and unverifiable to history until only recently. But, even though we may be able to find evidence for Genesis being written at an early date, for me an even more intriguing question is not who wrote Genesis or when, but where did the author get his information.
Was the information in Genesis 1-3 (or, it might be proper to include the material all the way up through chapter 11) given to the author as a dream or vision? Was it a Mohammed-like dictation from the voice of God? Was it a folk story handed down from the generations? Or did the author piece together elements from other creation stories and throw in a few original ideas?
On the one hand, the Genesis account shares significant elements in common with the surrounding culture’s creation myths. The author doesn’t state that he has received a specific revelation from the Hebrew God. Perhaps the areas where Genesis disagrees with other cultural cosmologies can be explained by artistic license? But on the other hand, how is it that it is just those elements that seem to fit what we know from science of the early earth the best? As stated in the previous chapter, how is it, if the whole account has it’s origin completely in human creativity, that this account alone could be so accurate? One would expect the more accurate accounts to come from the more advanced societies of the day- the Egyptian or Mesopotamian. Yet a nomadic people accustomed to a life of slavery produce the one creation account suggesting a God who creates ex nihilo- “out of nothing“ or “out of what cannot be seen“ (Genesis 1:1, Hebrews 11:3). And “out of what cannot be seen” is as good a way to describe the big bang as any.
It would certainly clear many things up if we knew where this information came from, yet the account does not tell us. We are left to wonder.
It is not only the historically minded that find Genesis a challenge, but although the theologians and philosophers. Genesis confronts us head on with the enduring questions of free will and determinism. Anyone who takes the Genesis account at all seriously inevitably asks such questions as: Did Adam and Eve truly have free will? Did God intend the fall of man? Could it have been prevented? If God is all-powerful and completely good, how could he allow humans to suffer? Did God, in effect, create evil?
In my own journey, I found it interesting to note that atheists were just as perplexed by some of the same questions as I was. Secular philosophy is transfixed by the question of free will, simply devoid of the God element.
This began to help me see that we are dealing with paradoxes of immense proportion- perhaps paradoxes that any of us- Christian or atheist- will only ever vaguely resolve.
I was helped further by recognizing that science is discovering all sorts of paradoxes all the time. Thanks to Einstein, all sorts of things that we once took for granted about time and space are now questionable. Might it be conceivably possible that both free will and determinism exist simultaneously? Many scientists and theologians are arguing just that in recent years.
On a more personal and less theoretic level, CS Lewis helped me make sense of some of these themes: “Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.” (MC, 48). Like Augustine long ago, I made my way past the claim that God was the author of evil, partly by reason and partly by trust that my reason is limited.
But, speaking of evil, what of this shadowy figure known as the devil who appears in serpent form in Genesis 3? He is amazingly obscure. I fancy that if I was writing the creation narrative that I would have included a detailed narrative on his origin. Yet the author does not indulge us. In fact, there are only scanty details regarding the devil throughout the Bible.
Serious bible students note how the information scripture confides about satan (including fallen angels and demons) undergoes an interesting evolution from Genesis through the Kings, the Prophets, and beyond to the New Testament. Scholars make all sorts of hypotheses as to why this is: perhaps the influence of various foreign belief systems, perhaps the result of increasing divine revelation of the spiritual realm. That is a topic large enough for a study of it’s own, but I have been hung up on a more specific question: why does satan appear as a snake?
In fact, it’s not even very clear whether the author of Genesis even saw the snake as the devil we associate him with. Certainly, Jews at a later time held the two as synonymous, but it is hard not to see some more mundane explanation in the original writing. Was this a mythic taboo against snakes in general? Does the author mean this as allegory, or literal history, or both? If the snake was really satan afterall, why punish the animal for the sins of a fallen angel? And how does this all fit in with the fossil record? I’m sure we find record of legless snakes before the advent of man.
I’m obviously not going to solve this dilemma within the confines of this essay. And that, of course, is my point. For every amazing answer we may find, we can be sure of an endless supply of new questions. That is the nature of Scripture: the extremes of doubt and affirmation all at once.
How can we better understand these extremes? The preceding questions serve as a perfect springboard for questions that will dominate this series. Instead of simply plunging ahead without reflecting, it will be worth our time to survey how many a pilgrim who has been on this road before has responded to the extremes of Genesis and Scripture as a whole. I have observed three general approaches to questions of this sort, and I believe it will benefit us greatly to spend some time analyzing them.
The first I will call the Scientific-Historical view. Some readers see factual detail and look for ways to justify those facts through science and history. They see the Genesis account as a reliable scientific description of the beginnings of the universe and man. Typically they hold a high view of the inerrancy of Scripture and come up with elaborate (if sometimes dubious) theories reconciling science with Scripture. The worst of this approach postulates all sorts of loophole nonsense, such as the appearance-of-age theory which suggests that God simply made the universe to appear old. Thus, geological strata all logic would dictate as being a million years old is actually just 6,000 years thanks to divine sleight of hand. Other theories that have been found wanting are numerous, such as the canopy theory, or the idea that all the fossil layers were laid down in one single year (the Flood). Some attempt to reconcile evolution with the Genesis account. The best of the Scientific-Historical position furnishes arguments of the type discussed in the previous chapter: vindication of certain aspects of the creation story that were once scoffed at such as a universe with a finite beginning and the remarkable correspondence of the days of creation with earth’s known formative history.
Of course, others (usually atheist or agnostic) who are also looking for historical and scientific fact reject the Genesis account finding it too fanciful and being unwilling to bend over backwards to explain away the weirder elements. I will call this the Skeptical view. Genesis has been a stumbling block for the empirically minded for centuries. The minute a talking snake enters the picture, those of this persuasion write the whole thing off. Thus, there may be a whole lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater ( Whether the talking serpent belongs to the category of bathwater remains, of course, to be seen.) The Skeptic may want to believe, but feels that to do so would be to sacrifice all their intelligence in the process. They often attack those of the previous view, but they actually share more in common with the Scientific-Historical than with the next view, the Mythical, which they secretly (sometimes openly) despise.
The Mythical view (and this is becoming quite popular) regards the whole account as a non-literal or extra-literal story whose primary purpose is to explain the major themes of existence. This view assumes that the author of the story began with concepts that were evident in human experience (such as pain, death, or longing for something transcendent) and explained their origin by making up simple, memorable stories. Those who take this position wholeheartedly say that what is important in the Genesis account is the ideas and not the particulars. It is the proverbial shell that must be stripped away to reveal the essential kernel.
Of course there are many versions of the Mythical view. That which I’ve just described was popularized by the late Joseph Campbell. But others of a more distinct Christian persuasion have held somewhat similar views. CS Lewis seems to have doubted the particulars of the Genesis story while affirming their symbolic truth. Augustine, in an odd finish to his Confessions, sees Genesis as largely allegorical. Those who take the Mythical view have an easier read when it comes to Genesis. There is no need for painstaking study of either Hebrew or science- just an armchair search for timeless human truths. And after finishing the Genesis account they can easily pick the up Babylonian or Hindu and learn just as much.
That said, I must say in my own personal quest I have swayed back and forth between these three views many a time. I believe I discovered something important in the process, and perhaps I can substantiate it. But, first, it must be explained why a book discussing Scripture as a whole must labor so heavily in the first few chapters. The answer to that is that these three views just discussed are bound to rear their heads over and over again in any discussion of the Bible. And getting a handle on them now will help navigate through the rest of the voyage. We are just setting out and, like JRR Tolkien’s Frodo, already we must deal with the Black Riders, Mr. Butterbur, and Strider.
What I have learned is that each of these positions offers important insights, but holding on to one exclusively is negligent. Perhaps I have set up straw dummies by making arbitrary divisions. Or perhaps the views I have discussed do seem to you to be real world positions. In my experience many hold firmly to one or the other of these views and are therefore missing the fullest experience of what the Genesis account has to offer us.
The Scientific-Historical perspective offers some amazing anchors for faith in a skeptical world, but it has it’s limitations at well. It runs the risk of being so focused on the literal that it confuses what literal really means. A classic example is the fuss that some make about the word yom (the Hebrew word we translate as day in Genesis 1 and 2). Yom can mean three things in Hebrew: a 24-hour period, a 12-hour period, or an indefinite amount of time (such as an age). Now, many would say that the literal meaning of yom is a 24-hour period, while age is a symbolic or figurative meaning. But as Newman and Eckelmann point out, this is “somewhat a matter of semantics” (61). Things which appear to be symbolic may actually be literal; we just don’t know enough about the author’s original use of the language. The best thinkers in this category do a scrupulous job avoiding such confusions, while others are less careful.
Furthermore, just because some elements of the Creation narrative are demonstrably in line with scientific knowledge, that doesn’t mean that the symbolic isn’t present as well. Consider the flaming swords that the angels guard the garden with after the fall of Adam and Eve. Is it really possible that angelic beings wielded the kind of swords we imagine, when swords as we imagine we created by humans at a later date. Did humans somehow get the idea of swords from their experience of the Fall? I suppose that’s a possibility, but I doubt it. Most likely the author is describing something he can’t describe any other way than to use something from his own experience which is similar to what he intends to describe. It may just be a picture of the hard-core reality of the separation of God from man. Or it may have been more real yet than that, we just have no way of knowing. But to shut out all possibility that the author is using mythic imagery is like having blinders on.
The Skeptical view in it’s turn teaches us the value of scrutiny. Without skepticism we lose sight of objective reality. Skepticism offers us a means to discover what is true, what is not so true, and what is false. With it we can compare and contrast, judge, and evaluate. We can demonstrate some world creation myths to be more true than others. We can guard against being taken in by “myths and old wives’ tales” (1 Timothy 4:7).
Still, the irony of the person who takes a strictly Skeptical stance is that they often
let their doubt about the strange elements of the Genesis account blind them from the demonstrable truths. It’s not just that some of the elements in Genesis or the Scripture as a whole happen to be true and some happen to be false (as we would expect from a merely human history of myth). It’s that some things are miraculously true and nothing is entirely demonstrably false. The skeptic is quick to scoff at the phrase “entirely demonstrably false”, saying that a smart enough debater can defend anything with enough Platonic questioning , but they are also just as quick to ignore the first part of the sentence: “some things are miraculously true”. This is the baby that the skeptic throws out with the bathwater. These are nuggets such as: how did the author of Genesis get the order of earth’s formative history right? how is it that Genesis and Einstein agree on so many points? and later, as we shall see, how is it that Scripture can prophesy events hundreds of years in advance with real accuracy? Just because some things are hard to swallow doesn’t mean that the more obvious miracles of Scripture are less miraculous.
Moving on to an analysis of the Mythic position, we come full circle. The Mythic argument reminds us that there was a time (which yet exists in many parts of the world) when the distinction between physical reality and spiritual truth was not as distinct. It is ignorant of us today to not recognize that these two overlap in the great Story of the Beginning. Also, it is usually the Mythic side that reminds us that Genesis is a Story addressing the deepest of human needs and questions and inspiring us with the notion that life is grand and miraculous, full of tragedy and promise. “Yet I have this against them” : they let their view blind them from the crucial and foundational supports for Christian faith that critical study brings.
Their divorce of science from myth is costly- and I believe that it is eroding the historical foundations of orthodoxy. Scripture is more than fact, but not less. The minute we stop caring about fact is the minute we relegate Christianity to the tame library of other alternate belief systems. Fact is nothing to the Eastern myths: that is apparent from Hindu cosmology. Islam depends upon the word and character of one mystic alone in the desert, but Christianity has always had fact as it’s bedrock. Remove that underpinning completely, and it will collapse. Our faith will then be “useless” as Paul so curtly explains (1 Corinthians 15).
So, after wrestling with all of this I have concluded that the truth in approaching the claims of Scripture is found in synthesis; that we must keep in mind the facts and the myth beyond the facts. We must keep questioning but let the answers we have found shed light on the questions that still plague us.
And when it comes to Genesis the questions still abound. Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons? Where do the Neanderthals fit in? We should stay awake at night with these question every once in a while.
